Knocks and Bruises, the Story of a Lower League Fan

Class ! :D

Duke, stop taking me seriously, it’s not mutual.

Interesting article. I agreed with a lot, but not all of it. As a Springfield Park regular I enjoyed those days and in many ways it was more “honest”. But I wouldn’t give up what we’ve achieved, and what I enjoyed most was the ride up through the divisions, rather than necessarily what we’ve got once we’re there I’ve got two points that many would call naive, but I’m going to say them anyway.

1. I wish we could have stayed at Springfield Park, and developed it to the size we needed as we rose through the divisions. There was plenty of space to develop there. I know the DW was all part of the statement of intent, and there’s all sorts of reasons and incentives to build a new ground, but I’d rather be playing in a 15-20,000 developed Springfield Park than the DW. It’d be more honest, we could fill it, and it’d be a reminder of our heritage and roots. And anyone that throws access/traffic problems at this, have you tried getting out of the DW car parks?

2. I wish we could have developed some good local youngsters into the team. We’ve only done that with Bainsey in the whole ride up and our time at the top. I know again, people are going to point at Utd etc taking all the best local youngsters, but we used to develop plenty of top level players – its about having the intent. Newell, Quinn, Walsh, Atherton, Hinnigan, Parkinson and all the others. They’d all have got in our current team. The first two were centreforwards that knew where the goal was at the top level – what would we give for that now? We’ve now got a manager who says he believes in English players, and then plays the likes of Gomez and Diame ahead of the likes of Watson and Moses.

Not read your article yet Duke but I’ve got to correct this comment:

“Two valid points, yet could we have afforded to expand Springfield like the DW? As the rugby club always claim that their funds helped, which is a valid point to be fair”

The rugby club’s funds did not help the construction of the new stadium one iota.
(1) They had long since sold their ground to Tesco & used it to pay off debts
(2) The stadium was already being constructed before Whelan bought them & brought them in to share the ground instead of Orrell
(3) The stadium did not receive any funding from the RL authorities whereas it did receive funding from the lieks of the Football Trust
(4) The stadium was/is owned by Whelco which is a completely different company to Wigan Athletic & Wigan Warriors even though they were once all owned by the same person. Even if point 1 above didn’t exist, neither club would have paid another firm to build them a ground which would not be theirs once completed & on which the would have to pay rent

So the rugby have no valid points when it comes to claiming that their funds helped build the stadium

For those saying Springfield Park could have been redeveloped, I very much doubt it.
For a start the houses on St Andrew’s Drive would have meant that little could be done with the Popular Side – either in terms of putting turnstiles in there or increasing the size of the stand
Yes technically the other 3 sides could have had bigger stand put on them but:
– If you increase the size of anything such as a supermarket or sports stadium, one of the things you always have to put in is how you propose to cope with the increased traffic both in terms of traffic flow & parking. At the JJB/DW they were able to put in new roads, foot bridges, car parks etc.. none of which would have been possible around Springfield Park without obtaining compulsory purhcase orders to hundreds of homes or paying above market value to persuade people in those homes to move. Either way it would have been too costly
– You would still have had to put all the turnstiles & exits on one side of the ground & I doubt that would have got past H&S concerns

“If you increase the size of anything such as a supermarket or sports stadium, one of the things you always have to put in is how you propose to cope with the increased traffic both in terms of traffic flow & parking. At the JJB/DW they were able to put in new roads, foot bridges, car parks etc.. none of which would have been possible around Springfield Park without obtaining compulsory purhcase orders to hundreds of homes or paying above market value to persuade people in those homes to move. Either way it would have been too costly”

Its always amazed me the pigs ear they made on access for the DW. When you’re designing something from scratch surely you should be able to get a quicker exit than you get off the DW car parks.